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Copy 1 writer's compliments. 



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A FEW REMARKS 



ON 



THE PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN 



BY 

H. A. J. MUNEO 



As the writer of these pages by no fault of his own, but 
by the accident of official position, has been called upon to assist 
in reforming the pronunciation of Latin, he would ask, nay 
earnestly beg, for criticism and advice from such of his readers 
as feel an interest in the subject. 

205449 
.'13 






In discussing the pronunciation of a dead language it is well 
to remember c the shrewd Sicilian's' N«(/>e /eat fjuefjuvaa axnareZv. And 
I should probably have gone on to the end of my life in being 
sober and mistrustful in this matter, if it had not been forced on 
my attention from many different quarters which I could not dis- 
regard. Nearly two years ago Mr Cornish of Eton, in his own 
name and that of several of his colleagues, urged me to print 
something on the matter. For many reasons I declined at the 
time to enter on so slippery a course. Soon after some friends here, 
to whose judgment I could not but defer, among them Dr Lightfoot 
and our Public Orator, pressed me to try a reform. Thus stimulated 
I gave some lectures on the subject more than a year ago, and ever 
since have continued in lecturing to adhere to the system I then 
traced out. Last term Professor Palmer wrote to me that they 
were thinking of a reform at Oxford : at his request I sent a 
pretty full summary of the plan I pursued. This was received with 
very great courtesy by him and the distinguished Committee ap- 
pointed to consider the matter. They were not however inclined 
to go so far as I had gone ; and they have since circulated a private 
paper stating what course they were disposed to recommend. It is 
with reference especially to thi& paper that I print these remarks. 
Personally I should have been disposed to bow at once to such 
high authority ; but I have been almost forced to move for the fol- 
lowing reasons. On the one hand the Head-Master of Winchester 
wrote to me a month ago to inform me that 'at a conference of 
Schoolmasters held at Sherborne this Christ mas... it was resolved 
to ask the Latin Professors of Oxford and Cambridge to issue a 
joint scheme of Latin pronunciation, to ensure uniformity in any 
changes contemplated'. On the other hand not only did I think 
myself, but I found it to be the general opinion of those whom I 
consulted, such as Dr Lightfoot, Mr John E. Mayor, Mr Jebb, Mr 
Cornish, that we might with advantage push reform farther than 
the Oxford paper proposes. Mr Mayor says ' I confess that I would 
rather keep to our existing pronunciation than accept any com- 
promise '. Lastly that distinguished scholar and grammarian Mr H. 
J. Koby has published a paper, in which he declares himself in favour 
of a complete scheme of reform. It is with great diffidence there- 
fore that I issue these remarks, for the sole purpose of allowing the 
questions involved to be considered and discussed. 

1—2 



I wish then to declare my full concurrence in the changes pro- 
posed in the Oxford paper and my reasons for going still farther. 
I hold that reform, whether partial or complete, should be under- 
taken for its own sake and the sake of the ancient language, not 
to make ourselves more intelligible to ' other Latin-reading nations ', 
who are not intelligible to eacbf other without special cultivation. 
A Frenchman's Latin is at first as unintelligible to an Italian, as 
ours is, and more absurd; a Spaniard cannot be understood by 
Frenchman or Italian ; a Scotchman's brogue, while retaining some- 
thing of the proper vowel sounds, has most of our own disagreeable 
peculiarities, is impleading and but partially intelligible to us, and 
cannot be understood by Spaniard, Frenchman or Italian 1 . 

Are we then (and this is a vital question) to endeavour to observe 
quantity systematically, to distinguish between long and short, and 
longer and shorter, syllables ? If this is to be done, we must break 
alike with all existing pronunciations, Italian as well as English. 
The tyranny of the accent over quantity is perhaps more marked 
in the Italian than in our own reading of Latin. We learn from 
Cicero and Quintilian that rhythm or a due admixture of long and 
short syllables was important in prose as well as verse ; and for 
myself, by observing quantity, I seem to feel more keenly the beauty 
of Cicero's style and Livy's, as well as Virgil's and Horace's. The 
same I find to be the case with those in whose judgment and 
knowledge I confide. Mr Mayor writes to me : 'As regards quantity, 
C. of Shrewsbury, a most experienced and intelligent teacher of 
elementary classics, tells me that since he has made his boys dis- 
tinguish cano, canis and canus, lego, legis and lex, legis, and sound 
all long syllables long, and short short, in whatever positions, he finds 
them perfect in quantity for verse composition'. 

Though we break however with all existing systems, Italian 
appears to me to offer many valuable aids which it would be most 
unwise to neglect. English seems so utterly different in all its tones, 
its entire vocalisation, from old Latin, that often we cannot find in it 
even single sounds to give as the representative of a Latin sound. 
The Italian of literature has been fixed for six centuries ; the more 
we examine the two, the more we feel that the Romano-Tuscan of 
to-day is essentially the Latin of the 7th or 8th century ; that ' Siede 
la terra dove nata fui ' must represent very nearly the 7th century 
pronunciation of 'sedet (il)laterra deiibi nata fui'; that race and 
climate and much else have made the 'lingua Toscana in bocca 
Romana' to inherit in a higher degree than any other language the 
refinements of old Latin. Let me not be misunderstood : I feel 

1 I have a sufficient knowledge of the ordinary Scotch method and care for no 
contradiction however flat. If in Edinburgh or elsewhere any pursue a superfine 
system, acceptable alike to gods and men, to Spaniard, Italian and ancient Eoman, that 
is not Scotch, but some ideal which common mortals would fain attain to, but cannot. 



most strongly the truth of Dr Bidding's judicious words, when he 
writes : ' the point which would be likely to cause the greatest 
difficulties, would be very subtle distinctions of shades of vowel 
sounds. But if any such were proposed, we should have to let 
boys be rough in it, and they would be rough in it. I feel there 
is so much to be said in favour of doing a thing as thoroughly as 
possible, that I would say no more than just this, that a subtle 
foreign pronunciation will not be realized at school I think \ What 
I mean is this : our English sounds are so different from what we 
must suppose the old Latin to have been, that, by looking only to 
them, we should probably fall into such slipshod ways as to make 
our new pronunciation hardly better, perhaps more distasteful than 
our present. I do not propose that every one should learn Italian 
in order to learn Latin. What I would suggest is that those who 
know Italian, should make use of their knowledge and should in 
many points take Italian sounds for the model to be followed ; that 
those who do not know it, should try to learn from others the 
sounds required, or such an approximation to them as may be pos- 
sible in each case. 

In seeking to recover in some degree the old pronunciation, we 
have many great advantages in Latin, compared with Greek : 1. 
from the literature developing itself comparatively late, and so not 
stereotyping the orthography : we see in the first volume of the 
Corpus inscr. Latin, a map as it were of the language spread open 
before us, and feel sure that change of spelling meant systematical 
change of pronunciation: coira, coera,.curar; aiquos, aequos, aecus ; 
queiquomque, quicumque, etc. etc. : 2. from the far less complexity of 
sounds, diphthongs mostly disappearing and the two chief ones left, 
ae and au, being easy to pronounce : 3. from the invaluable service the 
Italians have rendered us in keeping the accent in most cases on the 
right syllable, even while changing its nature. Many of us I fear are 
quite unconscious of the debt we owe them ; but, had we been left 
to our own lights, the confusion in Latin might have been as disas- 
trous as in Greek. In observing quantity we shall still keep the accent 
in its proper place, but its tyrannical predominance will be abated. 

At first the Latins seem to have been careless enough in matters 
of grammar and pronunciation. From the time of Ennius onwards 
this nation of grammarians devoted so much pains and attention to 
these matters that by the time of Cicero and Virgil the language had 
attained a perfection as great as that of Attic in its palmiest days. 
The slurring over of final syllables, once its great weakness, had been 
so much corrected by careful culture that, if Virgil's antiquarian 
prejudices had not stood in the way, we may infer from the example 
of Ovid, that elision of long syllables and many short ones would 
have almost disappeared. Every change in pronunciation seems to 
have been carefully marked by a change in the spelling. We may 
thus I think approximate to the true pronunciation. This approxi- 



mation, it may be said, will after all be a rude one. Very well : that 
may be an argument for doing nothing at all ; but not I think, if we 
try a reform, for doing it imperfectly. With this preface I will pro- 
ceed to shew where it seems to me we might safely go beyond the 
Oxford circular in correcting our pronunciation of the different 
letters : after that I will say a few words about quantity, accent and 
elision. 

4 a should have the sound of a in father : a that of the first a in 
papa\ As the first a of papa would seem in English mouths to be 
sometimes a short a, sometimes a short i, sometimes a short u, and as 
it is well to accustom the English to open the mouth and expand the 
chest, I would add : or still better, a should have the sound of the 
accentuated, a of the unaccentuated Italian a : amcita, padre, pa- 
drone. Of course a and every short vowel should be pronounced 
short, when the syllable in which they occur is only lengthened by 
position. 

' e (and ae) should have the sound of a in cake : e of the first a in 
aerial.' The first a of aerial has to my ear a very vague sound :-I 
would add : or better, let e have the sound of the Italian closed e 
(e) : e, whether the syllable is short or lengthened by position, and ae 
that of the Italian open e (e) : arena, ride, but bene, temere : est 
('eats'), but est ('is'); lectus (partic), but lectus ('bed'): Caesar, 
musae, Aeaeae. Thus in Italian as a rule e represents the loug, e 
represents the short Latin e ; while Latin ae is invariably represented 
by e : Cesare, secolo, etc. Diez compares the German lehen, wegen 
for the open, legen, heben for the close e. In English perhaps pear 
will give a notion of open, pain of close e. In Italian they do not 
distinguish between naturally long and short vowels, when the 
syllables are long by position ; but we should do so in Latin I think : 
mens, mentis. In Italian too the open and close sounds are only per- 
ceived in the accentuated syllables. 

In Lucilius' time the rustics said Cecilius pretor for Caecilius 
praetor: in two Samothracian inscriptions older than B.C. 100 (the 
sound of at by that time verging to an open e), we find muste piei 
and muste : in similar inscriptions /iivarat piei, and mystae : Paeligni 
is reproduced in Strabo by TLekiyvoL: Cicero, Yirgil, Festus and 
Servius all alike give caestus for /cecrro^ : by the first century, perhaps 
sooner, e was very frequently put for ae in words like taeter: we 
often find teter, erumna, mestus, presto and the like : soon inscriptions 
and Mss. began pertinaciously to. offer ae for e: praetium, praeces, 
quaerella, aegestas and the like, the ae clearly representing a short 
and very open e : sometimes it stands for a long e, as often in 
plaenus, the liquid before and after making perhaps the e more 
open (afcnvrj is always scaena) : and it is from this form plaenus that 
in Italian, contrary to the usual law of long Latin e, we have pieno 
with open e. With such a pedigree then, and with the genuine 



Latin ae always represented in Italian by open e, can we hesitate to 
pronounce the ae with this open e sound ? 

' I. should have the sound of e in he, % of e in behalf : I should 
prefer : I shall have the sound of the accentuated, i of the unac- 
centuated Italian i : timidi. 

( o and o should be sounded as at present': in this I cannot 
acquiesce : what is the present o ? non, bos, pons, honos ? or, nos, hos, 
domos ? these o's we English utter with totally different sounds : we 
have scarcely in English or in English-Latin a genuine o, except per- 
haps before r : roar, mores : then what is our Anglo-Latin o ? how 
does it differ in domum and donum? Here too the close and open 
Italian o represent respectively the long and short Latin, o, on the 
exact analogy of e. Let us then represent o by the close, o by the 
open Italian o : the name of the painter Benozzo Gozzoli gives a 
specimen of the two o's. Or I care not if we take the long and short 
German o : ohne, gold : for our purpose. Here too au has a curious 
analogy with ae : the Latin au becomes in Italian open o : bro, ode : I 
would pronounce thus in Latin : plbstrum, Clbdius, corns. Perhaps 
too the fact that gloria, vittoria and the common termination -orio 
have in Italian the open o, might shew that the corresponding o in 
Latin was open by coming between two liquids: compare plenus 
above. 

' u should have the sound of o in who, u of u in fruition : or, of 
accentuated and unaccentuated Italian u respectively: tumido, tumulto. 
For that large class of words, comprising all superlatives and many 
other kinds of nouns and of verbs, Quintilian (i, 4, 8) gives a valuable 
hint : ' there is a middle sound between u and i ; for we do not pro- 
nounce optimum {pptumum) either as optimum, or as optumum! 

' au should have the sound of ow in owl'' ' ; I should prefer the 
Italian au which gives more of the u, than our owl, cow. 

1 eu should be sounded as at present': for Greek words, adopted 
into Latin, let Greek authorities tell us what is right: of Latin words. 
there are but two or three, heu, ceu, sen: I prefer the Italian eu which 
gives you more of the e, than the English you sound of these words 
does : ' ui as we in we' \ here too in Latin we have but two or three 
small words, cui, hui, phui. 

■ oe should have the sound of a in cake': here too (putting Greek 
words out of the question), when hateful barbarisms like coelum, 
coena, moestus are eliminated, oe occurs very rarely in Latin: coepi, 
poena, moenia, besides the archaisms coera, moerus and the like, 
where oe, coming from oi, passed into u. If we must have a simple 
sound, I should take the open e sound which I have given to ae: 
but I should prefer a sound like the German 5. Their rarity how- 
ever makes the sound of oe, eu, ui of less importance. 

• ei should have the sound of i in idle 1 : surely this cannot be right. 
But this too is a diphthong which has practically disappeared from 
Latin, owing to the people's dislike to complex sounds: we find hei 



(more correctly ei): ei (dat.) and rei are sometimes monosyllables, 
and Horace has Pompei, Voltei, Virgil Penei. But in the older lan- 
guage there are thousands of ei's, later i or e: surely we are not to 
pronounce all these with the English i sound, in defiance alike of 
euphony and consistency. I should infinitely prefer either the Latin 
and Italian long e, or long i; .i.e. to pronounce omneis either as 
omnes or omnis. But as the diphthong is important, I would much 
rather give it the Italian or Latin e sound quickly followed by an 
Italian or Latin i sound. Then there is an important class of words 
of which the Oxford paper takes no note: are we to give the English 
i sound to such forms as eius, Pompeius, Seianusl And here 1 will 
take together a large class of similar words in ai, ei, oi, ui, which 
have really two i's, a vowel and a consonant, and which in old times 
were often so written, as we see in inscriptions and good Mss. : 
Quintilian tells us that Cicero preferred 'alio Maiiamque geminata 
i scribere'; and we know from Priscian that Caesar in his de analogia 
spelt Pompeiii (gen.) with three i's, and explained how they were 
all to be pronounced. We English shew in these words our usual 
undaunted inconsistency: we say Maia but major, Grains but Troja, 
ejus but Pompeius; Seius, while we call his son Sejamis. In such 
words the i has a double force, that of the vowel together with that 
of the consonant i (our y): the Greeks always write Hofxirrjios, 
not XIo/£7re£o?. In all these cases I conclude we should give the 
long Latin or Italian a, e, i sound respectively, followed by an En- 
glish y or Italian j sound: Grd-yus, Ma-ya, ma-yor, Tro-ya (this 
word has the open o sound in Italian), e-yus, Pompe-yus, Se-yanus, 
cu-yus. So with the compounds of iacio : e-yic.it, ab-yicit, re-yicit ; 
though we should always write them with a single i: eicit etc. : Gams 
is a dactyl, Caius a nonentity. The o or e of proin, proinde, prout, 
dein, deinde, when not forming a distinct syllable, is elided, does not 
form a diphthong, and must be treated as cases of elision between 
two words: in neutiquam e is elided as much as in numquam, nullus: 
the Greek eu and yi I refuse to pronounce upon. 

We come now to consonants: the Oxford paper proposes that the 
consonant i, or j, should have the sound of y in yard: that consonant 
u, or ?;, should be sounded as at present. That we should sound 
consonant i as our y I am quite agreed: equally persuaded am I that 
we should give consonant u the nearest sound possible to the vowel 
u, the sound that is of our English w. This I hold to be called for 
by the whole inner structure of the language: comp. iuvenis, iunior; 
noverat, nor at; motus, momen, nuntius, nundinae, etc. etc.: by the fact 
that the Greeks employe! their ov to form words which must have 
been utterly barbarous to their ears, in order to reproduce precisely 
the Roman sounds: OvaXrjvs, dSovevros, and many others even more 
repulsive : lastly by clear external evidence. Gellius is fond of quot- 
ing Cicero's friend Nigidius Figulus, next to Varro the most learned 
of the Romans. Now the passage about the vowels cited by Gellius 



at the end of his 19th book seems to me to shew that the consonant 
u in Valerius, etc. had the same relation to the vowel, as the i of 
iecur, etc. had to the vowel i; and that in both cases they were as 
near to the vowel sound as they could well be. Still more con- 
vincing is the curious passage in X 4: unless vos was sounded was, 
the story would seem to have no point or meaning. Now Gellius 
quoting Figulus covers the whole classical period. Why should we 
then renounce the advantage we have over others in our w, surely 
a nobler sound, to us at least, than vl 

The circular shrinks from giving c and g uniformly the sound of 
k and hard g\ and leaves ci and ti (and ? si) before another vowel to 
be sounded as at present. As for special reasons I have spoken of 
these points so fully in an Appendix, I will only say that, since ken, 
kin, get, give are such genuine English sounds, I see no reason for 
not allowing them in Latin, and many reasons for the contrary; and 
that our rashios, fashiams and the like are hardly compatible with a 
reformed system. 

The circular does not touch on other consonants : I wish to make 
a few remarks on some of them: bs, bt should always be sounded, 
generally written, ps, pt: lapsus, aps, apsens, apstulit, Amps, urps, 
opscenus, optulit, supter: and generally assimilation should take place 
in pronunciation, if not in spelling; ace-, not ado-, imm-, imp-, 
coll- etc. 

d and t we treat with our usual slovenliness, and force them up to 
the roof of our mouth: we should make them real dentals, as no 
doubt the Romans made them, and then we see how readily ad at, 
apud aput, ilhtd illut and the like interchange : f seems from what 
Quintilian says to have been sounded with a stronger breath than 
we employ ; but I suggest no change : m before q had a nasal sound : 
quamquam, numquam: final m was sounded slightly and indistinctly, 
as is proved by its elision and the testimony of grammarians: quu 
I avoid, pronouncing cu or quo: cum or quom, ecus or equos: r we 
should sound more strongly and distinctly than we do at present. 

Of s I would say a few words, as it has many interesting analogies 
in Italian: s between two vowels has in Italian and French a soft 
z sound like our rosev I would thus sound it between two vowels in 
Latin : rosa, musa, miser. But words of this kind in Latin are com- 
paratively yery few, and in Italian there are most suggestive excep- 
tions to s being soft between two vowels: in cosa, riso, etc. and 
in the adjective termination -oso it is sounded as our s in sad : these 
words represent causa (caussa), risus {rissus), examples of that very 
large class of which Quintilian (i 7, 20) speaks : he tells us that 
Cicero and Virgil wrote cassus, caussae, divissiones. There are vast 
numbers of such words, in which ss was the original spelling, a lost 
consonant having been assimilated, and the vowel was always long. 
The old Latin pronunciation seems to have been to dwell on the long 
vowel or diphthong, and s^imd the ss as a single sharp s, as in the 



10 

Italian words quoted: caussa, cdssus, mi-sit (missit), missus, 
iussus, ru-sum (ru-ssum) for rursum, odlo-sus (ssus) etc. etc.: the 
ss and s seem to have been sounded alike. At the beginning and end 
of words too, and at the beginning of syllables, and before consonants, 
s is always sharp in Italian, and should be so in Latin: sol, stella, 
de-sero, ni-si, quasi, bos, nos, sonus. 

There are 5 letters or unions of letters wholly alien to the old 
language and brought into it for the sole purpose of reproducing 
precise!}^ Greek sounds: y, z, ch, ph, th: we have abundant evidence 
that y, or Greek v, had some sound between i and u, probably like 
either French u or German u\ and one of these sounds I should wish 
to give it. Of z I do not feel competent to speak. The modern 
Greeks sound 0, <f> as we do, ^ like a strong Scotch guttural: in old 
Greek and Latin it seems to be generally agreed that the tenues 
c, p, t were distinctly sounded and an h sound appended. I should 
not venture to suggest such a pronunciation for Latin ph and th; but 
should prefer it for ch, as this would not be a difficult sound, and 
the Scotch or German guttural is strange to the English tongue. 

gn was sounded as we sound it, not as the Italians and French 
pronounce it. Though I do not propose to change the sound of n 
before c and g: anceps, ango and the like; it seems to have been 
nasal, nearer a g sound, and many grammarians wished to write 
agceps, aggo, aggulus, as the Greeks actually did for similar reasons: 
ayyeXos, iyKparr)?; though oddly enough both Italians and modern 
Greeks have here a clear n sound. 

In modern Latin pronunciation quantity is systematically neg- 
lected: attention to it seems to me essential in any reformed 
method, attention too to the natural length of vowels when long by 
position. In Latin there is no tj and co, Lucilius unluckily for us 
having laughed out of fashion the poet Accius' invention for noting 
naturally long syllables by doubling them, though we find many 
traces of this in the older inscriptions: Maarcus, paastores: so ee for 
e, I for l, as vlximus as well as vivo: ou for tl as poublicom. Apices 
were often used afterwards in all ages to mark naturally long sylla- 
bles: Mdrtis, fecerit: both these usages are noted by Quintilian. We 
know too that the vowel of the supine and cognate parts of the verb 
was always long by nature, if the vowel of the present indie, though 
short was followed by a medial: aactus, leectus (partic), but /actus, 
lectus (subst.) : Cicero (Orator § 159) tells us also that every vowel 
when followed by ns or nf became long by nature: Insanus, Infelix, 
but indoctus: coonsuevit, coonfecit, but composuit. And this is borne 
out by abundant other evidence : we find in Greek KAtJait?? KX^fiev- 
tos, Ovakrjv? OvaXevTos and the like. Priscian too (il 63) tells us 
that gn made the preceding vowel long by nature : reegnum, staag- 
num, benlgnus, mallgnus, abieegnus, privlgnus: and this is confirmed 
by our finding in inscriptions more than once the apex of a naturally 
long vowel attached to regni, regno, and also slgna, dlgni, and in 



11 

Greek the form 'Frjyvoi: we must not be misled by the wrong accents 
M«/9a:o? for Map/cos, Mayvos for Mayvos, there being conclusive testi- 
mony for the length of the vowel. The rhythm of prose as well as 
verse will be improved, if we attend to such points: amaans amaan- 
tis, doceens doceentis, legeens audieens, but legentis audientis; amaan- 
dus, doceendus, but legendus, audiendus: Moonstrum horreendum 
Informe ingeens: Insontem Infaandoo indicioo, and the like. An 
extruded consonant too often leaves a naturally short vowel long : 
ex, ee\ sex, seescenti, seemis; Sextius, Seestius (aijaTLcoBecrrepov nihil 
novi) ; ees, eest from edo. By comparing Cicero (de orat. in § 183) 
with Quintilian (i, 5, 18) we learn that in the time of the former the 
prose pronunciation was illius, unius, etc.: in the time of the latter 
illius, unius, he and subsequent grammarians holding the lengthen- 
ing to be a poetical licence. 

Plautus and Terence, following the usage of common life, never 
lengthen a short vowel before a mute and liquid : compare on this 
point Aristophanes with Euripides, Euripides with Homer : and in 
prose we should always keep such syllables short. When in the 
learned verse such syllables are lengthened, we should still sound 
the vowel short, and lengthen the syllable by separating distinctly 
the two consonants : Gnatum ante ova pdtris, pat-rem : Et Lycum 
nig-ris ocidis nigroque : similis volucri, nunc vera voluc-ris. 

The Italians, as I have already observed, have done us an in- 
calculable service by keeping in most cases the accent on the right 
syllable, though the loss of quantity has changed its nature. It 
would be well to recal the accent to the right place in the cases 
where we now neglect to do so ; to draw it forward towards 
enclitics : armdque, omnidve as well as armisque ; tantdne ; to pro- 
nounce tantdn, posthdc, postea, praeterea, adeo (adv.), quiprimus 
abdris, interse, apudmest, etc. 

In respect of elision I would only say that, by comparing Plautus 
with Ovid, we may see how much the elaborate cultivation of the 
language had tended to a more distinct sounding of final syllables ; 
and that but for Virgil's powerful influence the elision of long 
vowels would have almost ceased. Clearly we must not altogether 
pass over the elided vowel or syll. in m, except perhaps in the 
case of e in common words, que, neque and the like. 

In conclusion I would repeat that, if we are to reform our pro- 
nunciation at all, it would be well to do it as thoroughly as we 
can, and get rid of as many of our Shibboleths as possible ; and 
would suggest that exact uniformity does not exist among us now, 
and need not be looked upon as indispensable in a reformed system. 
At all events ' libera vi animam meam '. 

Teinity College: February 1871. 



12 



APPENDIX. 

An article which has just appeared- in the Academy of Feb. 15 by Mi* Max 
Miiller, ' on the pronunciation of c before e, i, y, ae, eu, oe\ and is argued 
out with his usual power, will help no doubt to make innovation more 
difficult here. His chief objection to change would seem to be the same 
as that urged in the Oxford circular, that it could not ' be attempted with- 
out intolerable offence to the ears of all the Latin-reading nations'. He 
speaks of 'fear of ridicule', 'a dislike of the harsh and disagreeable sound 
of such words as Kikero, fakit\ This difficulty has never struck me as of 
such very great weight ; and my ear has already accustomed itself to look 
on Kikero, skelus, skio and the like as even more euphonious than their 
former sounds. Of course I assume that Sisero, Sesar, Sephalus, sinic and 
the like are still to be English for the new Kikero, Kaesar, kynicus, just as 
much as for KtKepoiv, Kaicrap, KecfaaXos, kvvikos. Our present English pro- 
nunciation of Latin appears to afford some arguments to the point. Some 
centuries ago we pronounced with the rest of Europe (I assume now the 
new and corrected sound of the vowels) cana, caret, and the like, as kana, 
kara: when the revolution took place in our vowel sounds, we said kena, 
kera, not sena, sera. Now that we propose to reform our vowel sounds in 
cena, cera, why should we find kena, kera more offensive than sena, sera % 
Our English k is common before all vowels alike and such consonants as 
it can precede in Latin, and is at least as euphonious as s or tch: kettle and 
kin are not less mellifluous than settle and sin : Kikero I prefer to Tchi- 
tehero; and I doubt whether Kikero is to an Italian more offensive or 
strange than /Sisero, as they too have abundant k (eh) sounds before e and 
i. Assuredly the many Greek words like Gilicia, Cibyra, scena, cithara, 
Cithaeron I would rather have with their Greek than their Latin sounds. 

Quite the same is my experience with the very numerous cases of -ci, 
-si, -ti before another vowel: vicies, visio, vitium; species, spatium, ratio, 
gratia, solacium. Habit here too is all-powerful, whichever direction it 
takes. The common English pronunciation of Greek words like Avcri'as 
is I believe Avshia?, IIeAo7rovj/?7shioi, Mt/V^shioi and the like, though custom 
seems to permit a more correct sounding of the cr. The pronunciation 
of the oldest Greek scholars within my recollection, such as the late Bishop 
Butler and Mr George Burgess, proved that some generations ago Greek 
was in many points sounded more like Latin than it is now. Bishop 
Blomfield was fond of telling an anecdote about a Freshman examined by 
Porson. The Freshman talked of (3£\shXov : Porson intimated a preference 
for (3£\-tIov. The Freshman politely allowed the Professor to please him- 
self; but had all his life been accustomed to belshion and intended to stick 
to it. I think it not unlikely that before he took his degree he became 
reconciled to /3£\.tlov, and that if -the will were present, it would take us 
less time to exchange rayshio for ratio, speeshiees for spekies. 

Nay if we keep within the limits of the Oxford paper, we shall be 
forced to many awkward inconsistencies* Suppose we are comparing the 
successive forms of words which we see collected in the first volume of the 



13 

new Corpus Inscript, snch as coira, coera, cur a ; Cailius and Caelius; 
Coilius and Coelius, Caicilius and Caecilius, we must pronounce Koira, 
sera, kura; Kailius and Selius ; Koilius and Selius; Kaisilius and Sesilius. 
The more ancient pulcer and Gracci will be pulser and Graksi, the more 
recent pulcher and Gracchi will be pulker and Grakki: coepi and coepi 
will be &o£/n and se/n. And so with an indefinite number of terminations : 
baca and bacae will be baka and basae, siccus and sicci will be sikkus and 
g%&si. Long-suffering as we are on such points with our present system, 
a partially improved method would perhaps render them intolerable. The 
Italian shuns such inconsistencies by substituting ch ( = k) for c : secco, 
secchi, and lungo, lunghe. 

It is doubtful whether our improved y sound of j will not by contrast 
make such inconsistencies appear even more flagrant. Habit makes us 
acquiesce in our English way of pronouncing such words as ioci, iugi, 
coniugibus and the like: but will not yosi, yuji; conyujibus be somewhat 
uncouth 1 The Italians practically reverse this process, and give our j 
sound to the consonantal i and our k and hard g sound to the c and g ; by 
writing giuochi, gioghi. This gi in fact is the almost universal substitute 
for the Latin j, aiutare (adiutare) being quite exceptional. 

But though to my present feeling to reform the pronunciation of j for 
instance and leave that of c unchanged, would almost be worse than to do 
nothing, the important point is to know what is right or probably right. 
However firmly one may have held the common belief that the sound of the 
Latin c was in all cases the same as k or our k, the fact of such an autho- 
rity as Mr Max Miiller calling it in question, must make one hesitate. 
Still a variety of considerations compels me to retain my former belief. 

He points out with much force that it does not follow, because Greeks 
and others in transferring Latin words into their own language always 
represented c by k, that therefore the sound of the two letters was always 
identical. And yet the fact that Greek and barbarian, Goth and German 
alike, do reproduce the Latin c by k is such a prima facie argument of 
identity or near resemblance, that strong counter evidence is needed to 
rebut it. Hahn's Grammar and Dictionary shew that the Albanian has 
sounds representing most of the modern corruptions of the Latin c, such as 
various cr and £ sounds. The cicer, which must have been imported into 
those countries in early times, perhaps by Atticus on his farm at Buthrotum, 
is represented by KV/cyepe: this y (or German^') sound being exceedingly 
common in Albanian after all vowels, a and o as well as e and t. Now 
when I think of the Greek KiKepoov and then of his own eponymous cicer 
reproduced on one side by the Albanian Ky/cyepe and on the other by the 
German kicher, each of these languages shewing only the first and to them 
most natural deviation from the pure k sound, the concentrated force of 
the three impresses me strongly \ 

1 It strikes me as improbable that Ulfilas, after years of intercourse with Koman 
dignitaries in Constantinople during its early days, and living with his flock in the 
midst of Latin-speaking nations, should have got his Latin words through any ' Greek 
transliteration'; and, as to the form aivaggeli, surely although in modern Greek 77 
and in Italian ng are alike sounded as ng, the very fact that the Greeks put 7 for v and 
that some of the best Eoman Grammarians wished to write in Latin aggulus, aggens, 
iggerunt and the like, prove that it was different in ancient times. 



14 

For the Greeks, though indeed they did represent f by </>, took much 
pains to reproduce the most peculiar Latin sounds. How trying must it 
have been to the eyes and ears of a Greek — unless he wished to laugh at 
the barbarians — to find in his Polybius I±oo-toi;/aios 'P^'yovAos (Postiimius 
Regulus), in his D. Cassius OvovXrovpvov (Vulturni), in his Dionysius 
OvoXovo-Ktos (Yolscius), in his Ptolemy Ovipov^Bpov/x, and the like. If the 
Latin -ce and -ci had anything of- an s sound, why could not the Greeks 
represent them by some combination of £ or £ or <x, such as were used in 
Byzantine times 1 The Greeks would probably have given to these sounds 
some conventional meaning, as to those odd accumulations of ov : nor do 
I think they would have cared for the quantity of such barbarous words ; 
or, if they had cared for it, would have hesitated to change it. Indeed any 
consideration of quantity seems to me to apply with tenfold force to the 
supposition of an s added to the k sound in Latin, so long as quantity was 
regarded, or to the Italian tch, which surely must have been anterior to the 
English or French s sound. 

Yet more weighty to my mind is the fact that the Romans in all cases 
expressed k by c. In old times they could only reproduce Greek words in 
the rudest way; but for several generations this nation of philologers 
expended vast energy in overcoming this difficulty. For this purpose they 
introduced no less than five 'diacritical' letters or combinations of letters, 
y, z, ch, ph, th, in order to reproduce with the nicest accuracy every Greek 
sound; and schooled their tongue to utter words which once were most 
strange to them. At first content with Teses, they finally brought them- 
selves to adopt Theseus, a sound and intonation most alien to a Roman 
ear. Long satisfied with Saguntum, with sepurus or sepirus, lucinus or 
licinus, they came at last to Zacynthus, zephyrus, lychnus, containing each 
of them three letters or combinations of letters utterly foreign to them. 
So that at length they came to revel in such sweet sounds as Antheus, and 
Mnestheus, and Actios Oreithyia. 

"Why then, when they had got to Cepheus, Cephcdus, Chalcis, cithara 
and the like, if c was not exactly equivalent to k, did they not adopt here 
too a ' diacritical ' letter 1 One was at hand, more ready for use than any 
of the five adopted, their own k, now lying idle, with only an antiquarian 
value before a in a few words or symbols of words. And on this point the 
dekembres of no. 844 of the Corpus inscr. vol. 1 seems to have some bearing. 
This is one of nearly 200 short, plebeian, often half-barbarous very old 
inscriptions on a collection of ollae. The k before e or any letter except a 
is solecistic, just as in no. 831 is the c. instead of k. for calendas. From 
this I would infer that, as in the latter the writer saw no difference between 
c and k, so to the writer of the former k was the same as c before e. 
Perhaps keri tells the same tale, if, as Mommsen assumes, it be the geni- 
tive of cerus (creator). 

The following too appears to me to have no small significance. In 
Cicero's time from an abuse of Greek fashions the aspirate was permanently 
attached to a few Latin words. - Cicero tells us (Orator § 160) that till late 
in life he had persisted in saying pulcros, Cetegos, triumpos, Cartaginem; 
but after a hard atruggle evil habit and public opinion forced him to insert 
the h in these words. It appears now from inscriptions and Quintilian 
(i, 5, 20) that this h, which in some words was permanent, in others not, 



15 

was attached to c alike before a, o, u and e, i: in the 1st vol. of the Corpus 
inscr. we find Volchacia and Achilio (Acilio) ; often Pulcher, but also 
Pulcer. We have Gracchus and Graccus, Gracchis and Graccis : Quintilian 
refers to what he calls Catullus' ' nobile epigrainma' Chommoda dicebat, 
and says that some inscriptions still extant have choronae chenturiones 
praechones. It is I believe generally allowed that the ancient sound of 
0, </>, x was that °f the tenuis with a distinct h sound attached to it. But 
even conceding that ch was like the modern Greek or Scotch or German 
guttural, in either case I do not well see how the aspirate could have been 
attached to the c, if c had not a k sound, or how in this case c before e or i 
could have differed from c before a, o, u. 

And finally, what is to me most convincing of all, I do not well under- 
stand how in a people of Grammarians, where for 700 years from Ennius 
to Priscian the most distinguished writers were also the most minute 
philologers, not one, so far as we know, should have hinted at any difference, 
if such existed : neither Ennius, Accius or Lucilius, the three greatest of 
the early poets; nor Cicero, Varro or Csesar; nor Pliny or Quintilian, nor 
Gellius, Charisius, Donatus, Servius or Priscian. Lucilius devoted whole 
books to such slight matters as the use of fervit or fervet ; i or ei in termi- 
nations. Cicero in his Orator and elsewhere dwells on what seem to us 
very trivial minutiae. Varro asserted that lact was right, lac wrong; 
Csesar in his ' de analogia', addressed to Cicero, maintained that Varro and 
lact were both wrong, lac alone right. He told Cicero that the genitive of 
their common friend Pompeiius' name ought to have three i's and explained 
how they were to be pronounced; but seems to have said nothing of the 
c's in Cicero. Quintilian tells us how to pronounce the i of optimus, the 
final e of here, and much else of an equally important nature. And all 
know that Gellius, Servius, Priscian and the rest are brimful from first 
to last of the most insignificant details : but of a soft c not one syllable. 

Nay, what is even more to the point, Priscian relates at length how 
Pliny heard three different sounds of I: an 'exilis sonus' as in ille: a 
* plenus' as in sol: a 'medius' as in lectus. So Priscian himself finds 
the n of nomen to be ' plenior ', that of annis to be ' exilior ' ; and not only 
is there a difference in final m, but the m of magnus ' apertum sonat ', the 
moi umbra 'mediocre'. Of c ovSe ypv, singular indeed if its sound differed 
perceptibly before different letters ; for surely the distinctions in the letters 
just enumerated cannot have been so very great. 

Quite as little classical authority can I find for our strange confusion 
of sounds in many classes of words, important from their great number, as 
they happen to occur in so many common inflexions : I speak of ce, ci, si, se, 
si, ti, coming before another vowel, to all of which we give the same Hebraic 
fieXshiov sound : iaceam, placeo, iacies, faciunt, condicio ; nausea, caesius 
divisio; ratio, gratia, retia, otium, indutiae, etc. etc. The modern confu- 
sion of sounds here comes I believe not from classical times, but from the 
'colluvies gentium' which met together on the breaking up of the old 
world. Mr Miiller says Corssen has 'proved (p. 54) that from about 
200 a.d. words with ti began to be spelt with ci. How was that possible? 
if ci was always pronounced hi, then assibilated ti could never have been 
written ci. 1 The 'never' is surely too much : Ribbeck in his prolegomena 
to Virgil, p. 241, gives dozens of instances where one or other of his capital 



16 003 370 844 * 

Mss. write c for t or t for c; such as ac for at, tetera for cetera, tumulos 
for cumidos, etquis for ecquis, in none of which can the two letters have 
had the least similarity of sound. But he gives not a single instance of 
confusion in a capital Ms. between the ci and ti in question: these Mss. 
write without fail dicio, solatia, fades, proditio, seditio, ratio, spatium. 
And yet almost every line of Latin offers opportunities for blundering on 
this point. When we consider this, the half-dozen instances in Corssen 
seem quite inadequate to prove confusion between ci and ti. For there are 
but six which have even a prima facie look of sufficiency : the most pro- 
mising of these is renunciationem from a Roman insertion of a.d. 211, 
But when we look into its pedigree ) we find that Orelli copies it from 
Beinesius' collection 'quibus nihil imperfectius vitiosiusque extet,' says 
lac. Gronovius: 'ipse lapides nullos viderat' says another scholar: 'who 
exceeds all bounds in saxa violentius grassando,' says a third. When we 
remember then that in Beinesius' time renuncioiio was the recognised 
spelling, that one instance after another of conditio for example vanishes 
when it can be put to the test, surely the chances are a hundred to one 
that the c is due to Beinesius or some previous transcriber, not to the old 
Boman chiseller. Two more of unknown age are due to old copies taken 
when ocio at least was a received spelling : two more are published by 
Benier from a copy taken by a French officer at Medjana in Africa, Africa 
great mother of barbarisms and heresies. The 6th has an unquestionable 
voucher: Mommsen's inscr. reg. Neap. 109 has disposicionem. It was copied 
at Salerno ; but it must be late and is very barbarous, containing also 
rivocaverit, distituta, populusquae, an unmeaning suetad, the language 
being in part unintelligible. Had Corssen applied his vast industry to 
post-classical times, he might have collected without effort 100,000 clear 
instances of the confusion in question, the only reason with many ap- 
parently for writing ratio, spatium, faties, speties being that the spelling 
was wrong. We still see some relics of this barbarism of the middle ages 
in conditio, solatium, nuncius, and the like. 

We have however late classical authority of the 5th century for a cor- 
ruption of ti (not ci) : Servius tells us that medius was pronounced medsius, 
something like the Italian mezzo: Bompeius, probably of the same age, 
informs us that it is a fault to say Titius, not Titsius. If therefore we 
prefer the 5th century, to the age of Cicero and Quintilian, we should say, 
not Tishius, Horashius, but Titzius, Horatzius : but then to be consistent 
we should also say medzius, commodzius. From the strange emphasis with 
which Bompeius asserts that Titsius is right, Titius wrong, I should infer 
that this was a new fashion; and that laihtio represented to Ulfilas the 
sound of lectio in his day, while kautsjo gave the sound of cautio in the year 
551. In Servius' time the natural feeling for quantity was utterly gone: 
it had to be learnt as artificially as it is learnt now. But in earlier classical 
times such pronunciations were out of the question. Indeed if we are to 
observe quantity, which many of us think a vital part of reform, I hardly 
know how with any of the modern fashions of pronouncing we are properly 
to enunciate ratio and Horatiiis, fades and solatium. 



CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



